by J. L. Drake
He lifted his head and slowed to a stop.
A mid-sized man stood casually at the far end of the hallway. He, like Jason, was headed for the stairs and wore a broad-brimmed hat to conceal his face. His overcoat swirled around his feet, giving him the appearance of the Angel of Death gliding through the air.
Twenty feet before him stood the subject of his nightmares, the lone figure that had kept him up at night and made him fear the shadows.
Abel.
It was him.
Jason picked up his pace, hand clutching the butt of his Glock, knuckles white.
His voice nearly caught in his throat as it worked past his pounding heart.
“Sir!” he called out. “Would you please hold on a moment—?”
The man launched into a sprint, aimed right for the stairs.
“Hey! Hey!” Jason roared, drawing the gun as he dashed. “HEY!”
No doubt. This was him.
I’ve found you.
He pushed himself as fast as he could, but Abel was already at the staircase. The figure began to descend, and Jason felt his blood pressure rise.
You bastard, I’ve found you.
Jason slowed slightly as he approached the stairs. The last thing he wanted was to take a tumble and break his neck while Abel walked out the front door. There were no people in the lobby to witness his exit—what was once a benefit to the case was now infuriatingly backfiring.
The carpet on the floor was dry. Abel wasn’t wet. He had been inside since before the rain had started to fall at 6:05 p.m.
Pointless detail. Completely pointless. But he still noted it.
He flew down the stairs, taking leaps instead of steps. Suddenly, tripping wasn’t such a big concern. He just needed to move faster.
Back on the third floor. He blazed past it, barely even noticing. Abel wasn’t there, so he kept moving.
He could hear the rapid footsteps on the metal stairs below him. They were heavy but quick. No matter how fast he stepped, Abel seemed to move even further out of reach.
So much for that left-legged limp.
The memory of his interview with Cy Perri, Adam Fischer’s neighbor from the fourth floor, came back to him. Cy had said the man who had been recently seen with Adam had a bad left leg. But this guy was moving like an Olympic dasher with wings instead of feet.
Limps can be easily faked.
He shoved the thoughts out of his head. He needed to focus. They were approaching the ground level. He needed to grab Abel while he was trapped within the confines of the lobby. If he left the apartment building, he would run between the raindrops and disappear in a flash.
Just a few steps more. He readied his gun, trying to steady his heart rate. But then he heard something: the sound of the rain grew louder, then softer again. The front door had been opened, then closed. Abel was outside, as good as gone.
Jason nearly swore, but he was too out of breath. He skipped over the rest of the stairs, bounding clumsily into the lobby. The empty lobby.
Abel’s feet indentions were clear in the shaggy carpet. He had raced off the staircase and straight out the exit.
Jason’s blood ran cold, but he didn’t have any spare seconds to hesitate. He followed the footprints out of the building and into the pouring rain.
It was a cold rain. Made his bones feel brittle and his mind slow to a crawl. The streets were filled with impatient cars performing maneuvers that not even Evel Knievel would attempt in order to get home, but the sidewalks were completely empty of people.
Jason whipped his head back and forth, searching for the fleeing man in an overcoat, but the rainfall made everything more than a few yards from his face look like vague, obscure shapes. Only weak street lamps and beams of headlights from the lines of cars allowed him to see a thing.
Abel had only been a few seconds ahead of him. He couldn’t have gotten out of the immediate vicinity, no matter how shadowy he was.
Then, a blur passed in front of one of the car’s headlights. Just a momentary blackness. Jason focused his eyes, thankful that he had brought the fedora to keep the water out of his eyes.
A crash of lightning lit up the street like a strobe light in a seedy nightclub. Jason caught sight of a man dashing across the street, weaving between the clogged traffic as his coat flowed behind him. Then, the world went dark again.
But it was Abel. For sure.
Jason took off after him.
“It’s police, Abel!” he screamed over the rain. It felt good to say it out loud, to scream it with all his might. “Stop now!”
The figure glanced over his shoulder at the detective giving chase, but didn’t slow. In fact, he sped up, slicing through the falling water as he moved into a dark alleyway.
Jason snarled and leapt into the street. Giant shadows flickered through the air like an announcement as he ran through the headlights, and a few disgruntled yells from the drivers made it past the sound of the heavy rain, but he didn’t care about secrecy anymore. “All stealth, all the way” was out the window.
He approached the alley, gun held out. Every inch of his body was soaked, and a mini waterfall cascaded from the tip of his firearm. The frigid rain made him want to shiver, but he didn’t dare. He trotted into the alley.
Overhangs from the surrounding buildings provided shelter from the rainfall. Jason squinted to grow accustomed to the lighting.
The rain sounded like thousands of fingers drumming on a table, relentlessly, continuously, annoyingly.
Tic, plick, tic, tic, plick, tic…
But among it was something smooth and sweet.
Someone was whistling “Skip to My Lou.”
His eyes finally adjusted and he gazed at the alleyway.
Abel was in the middle of the walkway, slowly sauntering away from the officer. His hands were in his pockets, head tilted, shoulders relaxed, the sweet tune coming from within his broad-brimmed hat. He may as well have been taking a morning stroll through a suburban neighborhood.
“Abel…” He called out the name like it was poison. A poison that he would give his life to track down.
“Face me, Abel. Lemme see your hands.”
The figure continued to walk away. Hands in his pockets, moseying along without a care in the world.
“Abel, you piece of trash,” Jason hissed, pushing forward. “Don’t make me say it again!”
He kept strolling.
He thinks I won’t shoot him. Jason sighed. He knows I won’t shoot him.
“Turn around!” he bellowed, all his contempt and frustration dripping from the words like the rain from his coat. He gritted his teeth and took a few more steps forward. “Show your face!”
Skip, skip, skip to my Lou…
“Abel!” Fury pushed his feet despite his better judgment. He felt a growl rumble in his throat as he charged toward the man. Mere yards away, he screeched to a stop and held the barrel of his gun to Abel’s back. His finger was dangerously close to pulling the trigger.
“Look at me!” Tears welled up behind his eyes. He didn’t know why, and he quickly dismissed them.
Abel stopped.
Skip to my Lou, my darlin’.
A streak of lightning lit up the dark alley. Jason squinted, and his index finger moved slightly off the trigger.
Then Abel moved. He spun 360 degrees, slapping away Jason’s forearm. He quickly took a few steps back, keeping his face shrouded.
Jason snarled and clenched his fists. A moment later, he stared at his fists. His heart quivered. His gun was gone.
Abel held the Glock by its barrel, clutching it, flaunting it. He held up one finger and waved it back and forth, silently chiding “No, no.”
Anger welled up through Jason’s gut like molten lava. He snarled and spread his feet apart. With Abel standing right there unsuspectingly, so relaxed and confident in himself, now was the time to knock him to the ground and end it.
He felt his instincts take over his mind, planning every move he would make agai
nst Abel. He’d never lost a fight, and this would not be the first.
Feign a strike. Force him to block, opening up his vulnerable abdomen.
Jason sent his fist toward Abel’s shadowy jaw. Sure enough, the man raised his arm to counter the punch.
With all his strength, Jason shoved his other fist into Abel’s lower gut. The killer grunted and stumbled back.
Withdraw, but only slightly. Can’t have him get too discouraged.
Jason took a step back, giving Abel some room to breathe. If things went as he planned, his opponent would throw his own punch. Jason would then grasp Abel’s elbow, use his own momentum against him, and throw him onto the pavement, trapping him once and for all. The idea made Jason’s heart race.
Abel reared up like a bull, preparing to strike.
Sidestep his attack. Toro, toro, olé.
A hateful growl came from under Abel’s mask of shadows. It was guttural, inhuman, one of the most terrifying things Jason had ever heard. One of the key ingredients to a terrible nightmare.
The dark figure leapt forward, but Jason was ready. He dodged swiftly, barely avoiding Abel’s forceful charge. Jason reached out to grab Abel’s arm, but ended up clawing at empty air.
He turned around, confused, but mostly alarmed. Abel had bolted right past him, out of the alley, and back onto the street. He’d completely eluded Jason’s takedown.
The little son of a gun…
Jason quickly cleared his head and hurried after Abel.
Things hadn’t gone as he’d planned.
The rain pelted his body again, slowing him down and obscuring his view of Abel’s fleeing form. His coat seemed to weigh ten times more than normal, and his sopping shoes threatened to make his fall. But he didn’t slow down. He didn’t take his eyes off Abel for one second.
A gust of wind knocked his fedora off his head, allowing water to pour down his face. He snarled in frustration—at nature, fate, God, no one in particular—and focused even harder on the running killer. His slippery prey. He felt that if he even blinked, Abel would vanish among the raindrops.
Less than fifteen yards separated them. Fifteen yards too many. Jason willed his legs to move faster, but he was already at his limit. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this dash up. Five minutes? Five seconds?
Seeming to sense Jason’s weakness, Abel made a quick cut to the left, flying down a staircase that carved through the concrete earth. Jason shook his soaked hair out of his eyes and went in after him.
He stepped into the subway station, relieved to be out of the pounding storm. Normally, there were hundreds of people in the terminal and station for the transit trains, but, thanks to the rain, a throng of thousands was packed into the underground cavern, bustling and chatting and innocently hiding the man who held their lives in his heinous grip.
“No, no, no…” Jason hissed to himself as he stepped further into the station. He searched the crowd for Abel, a single tree in the Amazon Rainforest. Thousands of bodies, half of which were mid-sized males. There were overcoats all over the place, broad hats that could belong to anyone. Had he lost him?
He had to be in here somewhere. Jason hopped onto a bench and desperately searched, but it was no use. Abel was camouflaged perfectly. He was bustling just as everyone else was bustling, chatting just as everyone else was chatting. One of the group.
Jason paused as an idea struck.
Camouflaged so perfectly that he can’t adapt.
Jason pursed his lips and whistled as loud as he could. He drew in a deep breath and screamed with all his might, “Troll! Troll in the dungeon!”
The crowd of people slowed, just for a moment. Some giggled, some groaned, some rolled their eyes and continued on.
There. In the middle of the crowd. The one man who didn’t react.
A weight lifted itself from Jason’s chest as he stepped off the bench, back into the thick crowd. This chase wasn’t over yet.
Not by a long shot.
The fluorescent lights cast a strange, creepily surreal aura across the entire station, making the people’s flesh look gray and lifeless, like a horde of the walking dead. Jason slid through the shifting crowd, making his way inch by inch toward his shadowy quarry. He halved his distance from six meters to three, close enough to grab Abel’s dripping overcoat now.
He did his best to move casually, blending in, but nervous apprehension made his heart race. Here he was, close enough to smell what Abel had for lunch, and it looked like the killer didn’t even notice.
Then, as if a ripple in the cosmos tipped off some clairvoyant killer instinct, Abel’s head tilted to one side, sensing something was amiss. Jason silently cursed and slowed, putting a few shuffling bodies between them.
Hopefully, Abel was just cautious. Hopefully, he hadn’t detected his tail, and, hopefully, he wouldn’t take off running through the subway station.
A few seconds later, Jason found all these hopes come crashing down.
Abel set off in a dead sprint, barreling through the mass of people like a runaway locomotive.
Jason jogged after him, flailing his arms, trying to appear as authoritative as possible. “L.A.P.D.! Stop that man! He is a wanted murderer!”
Nobody moved to stop him. In fact, they shrieked and cleared a straight-shot path for the running killer through the terminal.
“This is an emergency! Someone stop him, now!”
He could almost hear Abel chuckling.
Jason groaned and sped up, glaring at the idle bystanders as he passed. But the looks of innocence and fear in their eyes made his hateful thoughts toward them vanish. Suddenly, they weren’t a crowd of cowardly people; they were a bunch of scared children.
Still, it would’ve been nice for someone to step out and tackle the guy.
He shook off the distractions and focused on Abel’s striding form. The artificial lights cast long, warped shadows from his flowing coat. Their rapid footsteps on the plastic flooring echoed endlessly through the subway tunnels leading from the area. The distance between the two of them seemed to grow with each second, despite the fact Jason hadn’t run this fast since his days in college.
The small tin badge strapped to his belt seemed to weigh a ton, but it strangely gave him new energy. He pushed his heels harder against the ground, propelling him closer and closer to his prey.
Abel streaked across the terminal, headed straight for another set of stairs that would lead them back to the rainy streets of L.A.
They bounded up the stairs, leaving the shelter behind. Jason became drenched in a matter of seconds, cursing the wind for swiping his fedora.
No time to think. Just move.
The swift figure raced across the sidewalk, not slowed by the downpour one bit. He dashed into the empty street, having the time and decency to look both ways first.
If only that hat would fall off and I could see his face. He’d have nowhere to hide then…
Just run.
Jason leapt into the street, noticing only a few cars were driving through the thick storm. The blinding headlights illuminated the falling raindrops, and the lit windows from nearby buildings were mirrored on the wet pavement.
He pumped his legs faster than he thought he could. Soon, it felt like his feet weren’t touching the ground. He almost didn’t believe his eyes when he saw he was gaining on Abel.
A few feet away. Abel’s legs appeared to be shaky.
Finally. Jason had dreamed of this moment for a long, long week. He bared his teeth and reached out his arm. His fingertips were a few inches from Abel’s coat. If he could get a fistful, this would all be over. The chase, the murders, the terror, everything.
Just inches. He let out a furious growl and pushed his legs a little bit harder.
He was within reach now.
He had him.
It took a second for his mind to register the loud, droning sound. He was so focused on Abel, he had forgotten something very important. A minor, crucial detail.
> He was running through the streets of one of the busiest towns on Earth.
The headlights cut through the rain, heading straight for Jason Flynn. He could hear screeching tires as the car tried to brake, but the slick pavement kept it careening forward.
The front bumper smashed into Jason’s rib cage. He toppled through the air and hit the asphalt, every bone screaming in pain.
But he hardly noticed. His fingers were still grasping at Abel’s coat, but now they were just grasping at empty air. He tried to sit up, but his torso rippled with agony and he collapsed into the puddles.
The door to the car opened and the driver stepped out. It was a short, foreign man. A taxi driver, judging by the yellow vehicle.
“Whoa, numb-nuts! Whaddya doing?”
Jason ignored the driver. Clutching his ribs, he gazed down the street. Abel’s shadowy form continued to sprint until it disappeared behind the wall of rain.
Skip to my Lou, my darlin’.
Chapter 12
“This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
—Psalm 118:24
Night was the worst.
Tales of old and modern stats alike had labeled the period of time from midnight to 3:00 a.m. the Witching Hour. Washington Irving penned the phrase in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, stating that demons, black magic, and rotten luck were strongest at that time. Bad things were more likely to happen, i.e. a baby crying, a stock market crash, or a heart attack.
Following immediately, from 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m., was a period charmingly titled the Devil’s Hour, as directly opposed to 3:00 p.m., the supposed time at which Christ was crucified. The most deaths had been recorded at this point, in the dead of night. Scientists had claimed that the human body’s immune system was at its weakest during the Devil’s Hour, and psychologists said the human psyche was extremely pessimistic and vulnerable.
So, from midnight to 5:00 a.m., you might want to just stay in bed.
Jason glanced at the clock mounted on the station’s wall as he staggered into the L.A.P.D.’s empty bullpen. It was 11:59 p.m. Almost the beginning of a new day. The start of the Witching Hour.